So, let’s talk pancakes today! Above is my standard recipe, but today I made changes. I used .5 C of 3 different flours to get the 1.5 total (oat flour, unbleached wheat, and spelt) AND I found canned blueberries at Aldi. I also eliminated the sugar, milk, and butter. Instead I used some pure maple syrup and 1/2 can coconut milk mixed with water to make about the same amount of liquid. Then I got the cast iron skillet coated in farm lard and butter and really hot. Then I poured in some batter and then placed the blueberries in, dotting them all over.

The nice thing about this recipe is it is very adaptable. The blueberries were juicy and soft and worked really well here. Give it a try!

At nearly 6 inches across, my rummage sale find of a spatula is quite impressive! I’ve always wanted one of these, but just never found one that seems just right. The brand new ones always have longer handles and seem unwieldy. This one, found just last week at our local Humane Society rummage sale, has a nice short handle, with a very dense, wood-like handle with smooth rivets to hold the metal. It feels good in the hand – always an important criterion for a hand tool of any sort. This vintage version was worth waiting for.

Trying it out on pancakes yesterday morning was a revelation. Such ease to accomplish the flipping task! Each whole cake fully supported – nice! I think this will be great for fish fillets too. It was definitely worth the $1 price tag and the space in the drawer.

Pancakes Made Simple

1.5 C. flour

2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 T. white sugar

1.25 C. milk

1 egg

3 T. melted butter

Sometimes I use a variety of flours. Yesterday was a combination of spelt and corn flours. Also, I skipped the melted butter and just used watered down cream for the milk which held plenty of fat. That way the recipe comes together super quick. This recipe is very adaptable to lots of variations!

1 egg (or 1 Tablespoon chia seeds added to a little water and stirred to gel)

2 tablespoons olive oil or good farm lard which is soft enough to use unmelted

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups spelt flour

1/2 cup almond flour

3 tablespoons brown sugar or buckwheat honey

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (fresh grated if possible)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a bowl, mix together the milk, pumpkin, egg, fat and vinegar (and honey if using). Combine the flour, brown sugar if using, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a separate bowl. Stir into the pumpkin mixture just enough to combine.

Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

Just a couple closing thoughts: Leftovers of these were excellent today with a fried egg on top. Also, I recently saw a recipe online for pancakes which called for stevia, a natural non-sugar sweetener. This is silly. You don’t add a little sugar product in pancake batter for a sweet taste! The small amount of sugar is in there because it produces a crispy outside to the finished pancakes. And lastly, give up the packaged mixes. Pancakes and waffles of all types are easy to make from real ingredients you throw together yourself. Save money and cook/eat real food without any preservatives/additives!

These are the gorgeous blue, red, and fingerling potatoes I snapped up at the farmer’s market. I came home and fried up some of the fingerlings in the duck fat I’ve been hoarding in the refrigerator since my last duck dinner. Oh my. Fresh potatoes were made for duck fat. That’s all I can say. I had to severely restrain myself from eating the whole pan-full. But by doing so I had the leftovers to warm in the pan in the morning and put fresh fried eggs over. Oh my again!

Take a look at the two eggs I cracked. The one on the left is from the supermarket labeled “cage-free, organic.” The one on the right is from Fred, the guy down the way with a bunch of chickens in his field. Do you see the difference? It would be even worse if the egg on the left was a standard, cheap supermarket egg.

With very little internet research you can find hundreds of references that explain this difference. Everything from how mistreated the chickens are in factory farming situations to the nutritional benefits to the chickens who forage outside. Even “cage-free” which means they are cooped up in a huge warehouse all together and fed organic corn is not the same as a chicken running around with her friends outside in the sunshine and eating little bits of this and that such as grass, grasshoppers, etc. Just a quick look, though, will show you they are very different. Look at how golden, almost orange the Fred egg is! Also, the yolks have more integrity, their structure is firmer, less apt to break when you don’t want them to. But then, cook them up! You won’t believe the difference! The flavor is sooooo rich and chickeny!

Scrambled eggs with home-grown lemon thyme is a real treat!

Sadly, you cannot find eggs like Fred’s easily. Even people who raise them often keep them in barns. I stopped on my bicycle one day, very excited to see a sign, “Eggs for Sale.” I didn’t see any chickens around, though, so I asked, where do you keep the chickens? The reply? “In the barn.” Well, I might as well buy the cheap eggs in the store! What is the point of having chickens if you don’t produce eggs like Fred’s? Fred tells me they are more expensive to raise than if he just bought eggs, but he does it for the flavor and then he sells a few extra, barely breaking even at $4 a dozen.

I’m happy to pay this for flavor alone, but knowing they are chock-full of much more excellent nutrition makes it a no-brainer. If you are still wringing your hands over the fat and/or cholesterol content of eggs get over it. The latest nutritional information confirms eating eggs is healthy! Your body needs fat and protein in the diet and eggs are an excellent source! It also pains me to think of mistreated chickens producing the cheap eggs, so I’m happy to pay on that account also. You might want to seek out your own “Fred” or check out raising your own chickens! No, I won’t tell you where Fred lives!!

Here is another version of wheatless pancakes. This time I used spelt flour, almond flour, corn flour, and oat flour. Spelt is an ancient form of wheat I’m trying here for the first time.

I’ll tell you no matter what I really like adding the ground nuts to recipes. These pancakes were so tasty because the nuts add such a great flavor. They are also very tender in texture, I think due to the nuts.

So here I am on the first Saturday of trying to eat a diet without any wheat. It is a challenge because fun breakfast food traditionally uses a lot of wheat. Think: French toast, pancakes, waffles, bagels, pastries. For today I thought I would try my traditional easy pancake recipe with substitutions for flour to see what would happen and voilà! They turned out pretty good! See my previous post to hear more about Wheat Belly by William Davis M.D. and the reasons to lose the wheat.

Yep, I couldn’t help messing with some of the other ingredients, coconut sugar is better for you, I was out of milk, coconut oil is so good for you, so why not, but you certainly wouldn’t have to make these changes if you wanted to try this. I also have done this recipe with almond milk made from almond butter and water, so feel free to switch out anything you want!